Hampshire Avon.

For anyone like me that fishes the Hants Avon and its carriers through the Somerley estate, this is hugely disappointing news.

I would be interested to hear the Christchurch Angling Club side of the story. The Somerley Estate is the jewel in the crown for CAC, the loss of this iconic stretch may be the beginning of the end?

Avon Diary 2014

Very sad news for CAC. I haven't been a member for a few years , but when I was ,I loved fishing on the Ibsley stretch and caught some cracking pike there.
The loss of all those waters will be bad news for the club , no doubt.

The most important aspect of our involvement with the countryside is that all waters and their environs are handed on to future generations in as good a condition as is practicable.

This should be the abiding fishery management principle for any angling club.

In my experience some clubs are superb guardians of our waters, while others, sadly, fall short.

The direct management by the Somerley Estate can only be of benefit to the fisheries and public face of angling.

I wish them the very best for the future.

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God mick b, you guys are so so lucky having waters like those on your doorstep. Back in the seventies I was seriously looking at moving down there when I was In the process of a job/career change. Sadly someone put their tiny little foot down!
Had the odd day visit on the royalty but never been able to do it justice.

This - Hampshire Avon 2011 - will give you an idea of how it - Somerley / Ibsley was once was - 1960s to mid 1970s in the time of the famous Colonel S.H. Crow. First met him when I was a be-shorted kid on holiday in Bournemouth in the mid 1960s and given a day's free coarse fishing (unsuccessful bar some minnows); met him again as a teenager who had just passed his driving test in the early 1970s and who had been given the job by another Avon keeper, Tom Williams, a pal and occasional Scotch-drinking buddy of his, to drive Tom plus bottle of Johnny' or Black Label or summat down the valley in his Land Rover for an afternoon session. The Colonel would hand me a cane Hardy L.R.H. No. 2 spinning rod, an Ambassadeur 6000 multiplier loaded with 20lb or so Milward's Black Spider braided terylene line, a box of minnows and plugs, and a clip-to-a-Barbour-beltrung telescopic gaff, then tell me to bring him back a salmon. I did on two occasions, one of them 18 pounds. Never coarse fished his waters though, as Tom let me fish his, with the proviso that I didn't hit the hot swims fished by his coarse syndicate rods or in any way get in the way of his much further up the food chain, Salmon Rods!

We'll be seeing rather more salmon fishing being done on the Colonel's old waters in future, I reckon.

Was that the same Tom Williams who made the Toms River video Paul? I still have a battered copy. Wonderful stuff

Yup. Loveliest and most entertaining of fellas, sober; bit of a monster after some of his usual Bell's or Teacher's. Water off a duck's back for me, even then, as I had a relation who was just the same: avoid when canned....

flightliner said:

God mick b, you guys are so so lucky having waters like those on your doorstep. Back in the seventies I was seriously looking at moving down there when I was In the process of a job/career change. Sadly someone put their tiny little foot down!
Had the odd day visit on the royalty but never been able to do it justice.

Click to expand...

Float, its all overblown, especially by the two main clubs in the area.

The Roach fishing is not worth the effort, even the Roach Projects annual 'match' didn't catch a Roach, not one!

The Barbel swims should have concrete platforms they are so damaged and overfished its a constant day and night thing in many places, utterly disgraceful.

The Chub fishing is superb, but Chublets are as rare as hens teeth, so where is the future when the lunkers die out?

The one shinning light is the present resurgence of the Dace population around Ringwood, however if the Pike bait snatchers have their way they wont last for long the way things are going (and they are not Polish either).

The Royalty is nothing short of a river commercial living off past reputations although there has been a few decent Roach reported recently.

Personally if I was a riparian owner I would ONLY allow a close syndicate on my waters.
That way I would have a list with names addresses and car numbers plus a uptodate ID photograph of ever member, which would give me instant access to any rule breaker, something which doesn't happen with a club letting.

Its the morons who leave litter behind, damage trees and bankside habitat and chuck their leftover bait into the swim as they leave ("that'll stop anyone else bagging up for a few days") that ruin it for the everyone.
Factor in the antiquated attitude of many committees, often dominated by locals 'because we know whats best for 'our' river' and you've got a recipe for terminal decline.

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Glad you said the above, Mick, for when I did a couple of years or so ago, here and on some Trad-leaning site, I got "Bitter, bitter, bitter ... the man's mad ... etc.".

I had been on a four-day trip with a girlfriend to the Avon Valley (from its upper waters and trouty / graylingy tribs right down to the tide at Mudeford), an area and waters that I spent a lot time in and on during the first thirty years of my life, and about which I had merely written online "Things change, I know, but when what was in many places in my not very far-off youth still-wild country with a full, clear river in front of you, with a wide, cattle-grazed valley floor and sheep-grazed downs stretching away beyond, all below a huge, often bird-hung or -arrowed sky has become, well, so roaded-up commuter-land suburban ... no wonder that the people of my age who I knew there in my youth and who were born and raised in the area have moved further and further Deep Country west....".

Bad for business such sentiments, I suppose; I was clearly "a-a-a-s-kin' for it" from those with vested interests in the area or who had moved there following some book-inspired dream.

Try and turn what's left around, though, chaps.

Well, thats put any thought of me leaving south yorkshire for the time being.
The removal costs will have to be used elsewhere!